Most exotic plausible World War 2 standard-issue weapons?

Exotic and Plausible?
No. 6 Mk.I Rifle Self Loading, 7.92mm. In early 1943, an early example of the German FG 42 falls into British hands. While interesting from a technical standpoint, it is dismissed as a novelty by the military establishment - except the Royal Armored Corps. They see it as the ideal weapon for dismounted armored crews, mainly for it's firepower. The fact that it simplifies the supply situation by using the same 7.92mm cartridges as the standard tank Machine gun, the Besa.

Ultimately, some 10,000 would be produced by BSA by wars end. In addition, as many as 400 captured FG 42 rifles were collected from various theaters and ganged into service. These were designated the No.6 Mk1* Rifle, Self Loading, 7.92mm (Metric).

Postwar, the No.6 continued in service with the Armored Corps until the 7.92mm Besa was withdrawn from service in the 1960's. At some point, as the 7.92mm round was being displaced by the 7.62mm NATO, the RAC converted some 1500 of the rifles to the new cartridge, with new barrels and sights produced by Parker and Hale.

These converted rifles were rejected in favor of the FAL pattern rifles already in service. The converted No.6 rifles were passed to the Royal Navy, where they found their way into the arms lockers on many secondary ships, including the HMS Endurance during the Falklands War.
 
I'm still liking the idea of herbicidal warfare (targeting your enemies agriculture) becomes acceptable during WW2 while using "gas" (traditional gas weapons against direct military targets ) are still verboten.

I wonder about the ways the various sides would deploy herbicides.
 
I honestly wonder just how well French BB grade gas shells would have worked against say Italian capital ships.

Which agent are you using? Blister agents AKA Mustard gas were the most common then. Dispersed as a heavy sticky aerosol they were highly acidic, hence the blistering effect, and coated the surfaces they fell on. Direct sunlight slowly degrades the agents, tho Blister agents are a lot more stable here than nerve agents which are very volatile. Alkaline compounds are used as cleaning or decontamination agents. We kept cans of powdered Super Tropical Bleach around for that. Mixed with water, a slurry mix was recommended, and brushed on the contaminated surface, then rinsed after a few minutes. Salt water has some degradation effect on acidic chemical agents. Hosing down and scrubbing the contaminated ship surfaces would be useful as long as you are not sloppy and spread the intact portion of the agent further. Direct the cleaning water overboard. Alkaline detergents other than Bleach have some utility as well. Those are used for cleaning contaminated skin.

Air bursts <50 meters from the target would be best, but I cant see anyone trying to get mechanical time fuzes set correct in ship to ship combat. A very close burst in the water can crate some useful contamination if the ship passes through the spray, but a direct hot will do a better job of it. Secondaries might also be more efficient at contaminating a target.
An even weirder late 20th century weapon would have been a shell developed for for the Iowa's 16 inch guns. Designed to fly to a certain height and then have a parachute deploy. Then a laser designator (either on an aircraft or on the ground) would designate the target and the rocket would ignite propelling the laser guided 16 inch rocket assisted shell at the target.

This was considered for a variety of cannon, and as a rocket warhead. Somewhere in the back issues of the Field Artillery Journal of the era theres a article on a proposed round like this for 155mm caliber cannon of the FA. Seek And Destroy Artillery Munitions is IIRC the development designation. (SADARM ?). The Copperhead laser tracking artillery round came out of the same era. We did use a few of those in Desert Storm. Difference being the Copperhead remained ballistic-no parachute.

Not effective, a warships compartmentalization would render HEAT almost useless. HEAT tends to lose effectiveness after running into the first layer of armor, hence spaced armor being a way to mitigate it. Unless you hit a turret, barbette or conning tower there are multiple compartments between the outer layer and anything important, so the jet will dissipate before it hits something important, while a solid shell of sufficient mass/velocity will bull its way through

About guaranteed to start a fire in the compartments it did penetrate. Hope its not a paint locker or aviation fuel tank, even diesel fuel would ignite from this one.
 
Last edited:
Then there are the strobe light batteries. The US Army tested the idea, trained and deployed some units to Europe, and made little use of them. The basis idea is the disorientation from high power illumination flickering at certain frequencies. The CDL batteries are a understudied weapon. Search light batteries were used for general illumination. One technique was to reflect the light off clouds onto the target area. Once you got the effect it was a bit more consistent & sustained than parachute flares. The reflection technique allowed masking the light battery behind a hill, woods, or town.
 
Starting with a POD no later earlier than 1913, your goal is to arm one of the major combatants of the Second World War (Germany, Japan, Italy, Soviet Union, US, or British Empire) with the most atypical combination of weaponry possible.

But the weapons systems chosen have to be PLAUSIBLE. You can't load down an army with kugelpanzers and glider-tanks. Even normal (but fringe) weapons systems are fine if used in unusually large numbers. A 1939 Italian army equipped with 8-inch Japanese-style rocket-mortar tubes, Gurkha kukris, trench shotguns in lieu of submachine guns, and the like, would still be pretty weird.
Revolvers ?
 
Would a WWII version of this be feasible?

The Italians did have something vaguely similar a carbine with a side mounted cup type mini mortar/grenade launcher. A lot more doable would be a M79 type breechloading single shot grenade launcher in the 30-45mm range of size. The weapon itself is in essence just a really big single shot breechloading break action shotgun that pretty much any gun company could make. The tricky part is the actual grenade.

Easiest would be combining the HEAT principle with a rifle grenade like the rather large ones that came out in the 1960s before disposable rocket launchers became too common and tank armor had continually improved meaning you needed a really big HEAT round to take one out with a rifle grenade.



The Swiss Flying carrots got huge. I think the largest were like nearly three pounds total. Huge fucking things.
 
Revolvers ?

How about something like what the Germans briefly developed and deployed in WW2. Namely modified Very pistol type flare guns with very very large potruding HEAT or HE shells. Small enough that a rifle man could probably carry one but perfect for short range firepower. Like say if your storming an enemy trench and want to make a pillbox a flaming hole.
 
About guaranteed to start a fire in the compartments it did penetrate. Hope its not a paint locker or aviation fuel tank, even diesel fuel would ignite from this one.
Fires are nasty, but outside the magazines they aren't an immediate threat on their own to a capital ship. Even a turret or barbette has post WWI anti flash interlocks to stop them from taking out more than just a single turret. And for starting fires, well HE can do that, and you have a reason to carry HE as it is much more useful than HEAT, which is only good for situations of "in a gunfight with something much bigger and nastier than me"
 
Fires are nasty, but outside the magazines they aren't an immediate threat on their own to a capital ship. Even a turret or barbette has post WWI anti flash interlocks to stop them from taking out more than just a single turret. And for starting fires, well HE can do that, and you have a reason to carry HE as it is much more useful than HEAT, which is only good for situations of "in a gunfight with something much bigger and nastier than me"

Makes me wonder about a WP shell for naval guns and coastal artillery. The idea being the shell either explodes above the ships position and scattering numerous chunks of burning willy pete over the ship or something similar. The Wily pete chunks might not burn through the armor but they will start fires fucking everywhere and it won't be as easy to get rid of the chunks the same way that other burning substances or articles can be washed over the side by a couple guys with a hose firing seawater.
 
Makes me wonder about a WP shell for naval guns and coastal artillery. The idea being the shell either explodes above the ships position and scattering numerous chunks of burning willy pete over the ship or something similar. The Wily pete chunks might not burn through the armor but they will start fires fucking everywhere and it won't be as easy to get rid of the chunks the same way that other burning substances or articles can be washed over the side by a couple guys with a hose firing seawater.
It would be pretty difficult to ensure an airburst over a ship at the kind of ranges involved in Naval engagements.
 
Makes me wonder about a WP shell for naval guns and coastal artillery. The idea being the shell either explodes above the ships position and scattering numerous chunks of burning willy pete over the ship or something similar. The Wily pete chunks might not burn through the armor but they will start fires fucking everywhere and it won't be as easy to get rid of the chunks the same way that other burning substances or articles can be washed over the side by a couple guys with a hose firing seawater.
Until proximity fuses, you are having to rely on time fuses, and guessing when the shell would be in position, too early and it either scatters too far or misses entirely, too late and it has passed over or smacks into the target/sea. It is an extra step which adds time and complication to things. Yes AA guns did it, but they had much shorter times of flight and more direct flight paths, and required a whole extra set of FC equipment

You also don't get that much, the highest amount of filler for a naval HE shell was 136 pounds, from Yamato's 3000 pound shells. If you hit optimally to have everything on the deck of the target, yes that is really nasty, but that's much harder than just smacking them with an AP shell, which is going to do as much or more damage and is a potential hard kill on anything afloat. More realistically you airburst high and far to have a decent hit rate and are lucky to have a few percent if that land. Realistically it would only be worth it for smaller guns that can't penetrate armor, so have even less payload and do less damage
 
There is this.

View attachment 697903

Soviet research into recoilless rifles for warships led to a small like 1000 ton destroyer being equipped with like a 15 inch recoilless rifles. The rifle is practically the size of the ship it's mounted on.
This Tiny Greek Gunboat Had a Scary Amount of Firepower

Greek Cypriot ONTOS-style fast gunboat with 12 x 106mm recoilless rifles.

 
There is this.

View attachment 697903

Soviet research into recoilless rifles for warships led to a small like 1000 ton destroyer being equipped with like a 15 inch recoilless rifles. The rifle is practically the size of the ship it's mounted on.

The guy who designed that was executed in the Great Purge for being to close to some generals that were also purged. It was the reason the Soviets didn’t field recoilless rifles in the war, apart from a 76mm that saw limited use in the Winter War, and was the basis for a German design. He had some exotic ideas for recoilless weapons, like automatic aircraft guns.
 
Until proximity fuses, you are having to rely on time fuses, and guessing when the shell would be in position, too early and it either scatters too far or misses entirely, too late and it has passed over or smacks into the target/sea. It is an extra step which adds time and complication to things. Yes AA guns did it, but they had much shorter times of flight and more direct flight paths, and required a whole extra set of FC equipment

You also don't get that much, the highest amount of filler for a naval HE shell was 136 pounds, from Yamato's 3000 pound shells. If you hit optimally to have everything on the deck of the target, yes that is really nasty, but that's much harder than just smacking them with an AP shell, which is going to do as much or more damage and is a potential hard kill on anything afloat. More realistically you airburst high and far to have a decent hit rate and are lucky to have a few percent if that land. Realistically it would only be worth it for smaller guns that can't penetrate armor, so have even less payload and do less damage

until VT fuzes, anyway

To be honest I was mostly thinking of it originally being a shell developed around say OTL WW1 for the US's 1890s vintage 12 inch coastal defense mortars. And I was thinking their real use would be for use as railwaygun/siege guns for targeting very large heavily fortified border fortress complexes. Basically with a mortars larger volume of filler to weight (since the shell walls are thinner) you'd get more WP in a 12 inch mortar shell then a 12 inch cannon/howitzer shell. And the goal was at least partially to scatter as much chunks of burning WP around the fortress complexes as possible damaging exposed weapons, destroying periscopes and viewing slits and ideally working on the air ventilators/air intake mechanisms. Basically burn up all the oxygen either preventing new oxygen from entering the fortress or even starting enough of a fire to suck the oxygen out of the fortress (and ideally out of the lungs of the defenders). Meaning you could neutralize the forts even without directly penetrating it.
 
Might as well throw in man-portable ballistic shields. They weren't hugely popular, but Italy (Ansaldo), France (Daigre), and Japan used bullet resistant shields in WW1 and the Russo Japanese War during trench and siege warfare.
 
Might as well throw in man-portable ballistic shields. They weren't hugely popular, but Italy (Ansaldo), France (Daigre), and Japan used bullet resistant shields in WW1 and the Russo Japanese War during trench and siege warfare.
Not for infantry but I wonder about the plausbility of on certain types of warships having collapsible/detachable lightly armored splinter shields that could be raised up and locked in place or taken out of storage carried to the ships side or such and then locked in place. Basically the idea would be to provide some protection against things like aircraft strafing, light shrapnel, and that sort of thing for certain types of warships. Basically don't need to have them up in in place all the time but capable of being rapidly em placed to provide protection against shell splinters to crewman.
 
Top